A visit to Hever Castle

Yesterday my wife and I happened to be in the area of Edenbridge in Kent with a couple of hours to spare and decided to indulge ourselves with a “brush with history” by visiting Hever Castle, the ancestral home of the Boleyn family and, of course, famously Anne Boleyn, King Henry VIII’s second wife [the first “Beheaded” one in the celebrated dictum about them: “Divorced, Beheaded, Died, Divorced, Beheaded, Survived”].

I’m no expert upon 16^th Century English history but one of the first fascinating facts I learned yesterday was that, surprisingly, nobody is quite sure about exactly when Anne was born (as she was) in Norfolk as the second daughter of Thomas Boleyn – later Earl of Wiltshire – and his wife Elizabeth.

It was apparently at some point between 1501 and 1507.

To cut to the chase, Anne was educated in the Netherlands and France and then returned to England in 1522 in order to marry her cousin. That union was called off and she subsequently became a maid of honour to the Queen (Catherine of Aragon as she is known to history).

A second betrothal  for Anne was then also called off and – let us get down to the basics – Henry VIII began his pursuit of her early in 1526 when she was aged somewhere between 19 and 25.

Anne initially declined his requests/pleas/demands that she become his mistress (as indeed her elder sister Mary had already been and – rumour had it – had borne him two children) but eventually it was Henry’s desire to rid himself of Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne instead that was the primary cause of what later became Britain’s breakaway from the Roman Catholic church specifically because it would not allow his marriage to Catherine to be annulled.

After the “divorce” of Catherine, Anne duly became (Henry’s wife Number Two) and Queen of England on 1^st June 1533. It was a short tenure. She had a daughter (later Elizabeth I) that September.

However, Henry desperately wanted a son and – after Anne had endured three later miscarriages – he began courting Jane Seymour (who later became his Wife Number Three) in March 1536. He then had Anne investigated “for high treason” the following month: she was convicted on 15^th May and beheaded four days later.

As members of the National Trust, it was interesting to experience the set-up at Hever Castle.

I was informed at the ticket office that my senior citizen entry ticket would have cost £23, save for the fact that – because of some discount scheme or another – on this occasion we could enter for the sum of £20 each.

As one reached the approach to the Castle, there was an ice cream parlour on the left and a souvenir shop on the right. We entered the latter for our first stop.

A feature of National Trust properties is that the “brand” is always well to the fore. In effect every National Trust property tends to have what I’d call “standard National Trust” merchandise, albeit tailored to the specific property that you are visiting.

For example, if you visit Bateman’s (Rudyard Kipling’s home), you can buy crockery, pots of honey, stationery, fridge magnets and all sorts of other paraphernalia – much of it little or nothing to do with Kipling or his life – but all of them uniformly badged “Bateman’s”. Then again, if you should happen to visit four different National Trust properties, you will be able to buy exactly the same merchandise but similarly badged four different ways.

To my perhaps jaundiced eye, it seems that Hever Castle – which is not a National Trust property – had almost a similar set of “standard” merchandise and then a lot more besides. Some of its wares were specifically related to Hever Castle and the Boleyn family – and some were not.

Yesterday I could have bought 21^st Century tea pots, crockery, tea cups and mugs … all badged “Hever Castle”, which I felt was somehow borderline weird. It seemed incongruous – almost as though – if you are visiting a 16^th Century (or even older) Castle, you ought be presented with such potential items to buy in the form they would have been in the 16^th Century, not 2024!

As it was we duly toured the three floors of the Castle, which experience was mildly interesting – I hadn’t realised that the Astors were once owners of the pile and that Churchill was often a routine guest  – but overall we were in and out (including a stop for a sausage roll and cup of tea each from the café and a look at some of the grounds and an avenue of oddly modern topiary items) – inside 75 minutes.